Margot jumped back, running to the back of the small ship. The other men, she noted, were just laughing, cheering their friend on. And Rylinn was not with them. She would have to handle this on her own. But how?
She spun, looking for something, anything, that might?—
“Back the fuck off!” she shouted, yanking one of the strangely shaped alien weapons from the rack and pointing it vaguely at Tikks.
She had no idea how the damn thing worked, but she hoped the threat would be enough to stop the man’s advances. But he just laughed even more.
“Dumb bitch. It’s not even armed.”
“Like this?” she shot back, randomly pressing buttons on the strange weapon, not having a clue what they actually did.
A blast rang out, a massive pulse of energy firing out of one end. Margot dropped the burning hot weapon in a flash.
“You fucking idiot! You overloaded the?—”
The ship lurched and dove, a strong wind blowing through it.
“She shot Kokrain!” someone shouted.
Even in all the panic, she had the presence of mind to realize she’d somehow accidentally killed the pilot, ruining the controls in the process by the sound of the copilot’s frantic shouting. And now they were going to crash, and it was all her fault.
The ship bucked and spun, throwing her against the hull. She managed to grab onto a strap system used for stowing gear. Luckily, this one was empty, and she was able to loop her arms into it, holding on for dear life as they plummeted out of the sky.
At the very last second an automated blast fired, keeping the ship from shattering into the ground, but only just. They hit hard, the craft breaking with a sickening metal crunch from the impact.
Margot felt like her arms had nearly been ripped from their sockets, and for all she knew that might have been the case. But all that mattered right now was the most basic of instincts.
Fight or flight.
Given the situation, the choice was clear.
Margot lunged out the gaping hole in the ship’s side, ignoring the sharp metal as it sliced her skin, and took off in a sprint into the woods as fast as her newly rune-enhanced legs would take her, running until her legs screamed in agony then pushing even harder. Failure was not an option. If they caught her, they’d kill her. But not before they did far worse things than that. This pain she could overcome. A team of angry men whose comrade she’d just killed she could not.
And so, she ran and ran, lost and alone, leaving a team of dazed, bloody, and very angry men in her wake, hoping desperately that they wouldn’t find her.
Time would tell.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Margot was shaking.
Not from fear, not from anger, but from the exhaustion of tapping out her adrenaline after spiking it higher than she’d ever felt in her life. She had run. Hard. Fast. Far. But despite her flight, she knew in her heart that Gromm’s men wouldn’t just let her go. Not a chance. And that was what made her push even harder until her body finally could take no more.
Alone in the middle of some swathe of forest that looked pretty much like every other wooded area she’d seen since landing on this planet, Margot forced herself to put one foot in front of the other and keep moving. Moving away from the alien hunters and deeper into the unknown wilds.
Her body ached despite the power her new runes had been feeding her as she ran. It wasn’t until she stopped that she realized just how much of a boost the new markings had given her.
“Spiffy pigment, indeed. No wonder Gromm was so pissed,” she mused, managing a tiny fraction of a grin, if not a chuckle. “Serves him right. He’s not just a bounty hunter. That son of a bitch straight-up sells people.”
She itched her thighs through her bottoms. The runes fueling her legs were noticeable now that they’d been put to such use. But she was glad for it. Glad to deny Gromm the pigment’s power. She could only imagine how much stronger it would have made him had it been added to his collection of power runes. Stronger, and far more dangerous.
But Floxxia had told her that the pigment does not change who a person is. Who they choose to be is entirely up to them. The pigment was just a symbiotic blend of powerful microorganisms along for the ride.
Margot trekked for a good half hour at a slower pace, struggling across soft and muddy ground until she finally found a small trickle of a stream. She knew there had to be one somewhere near. The trick was finding it.
“Oh, thank God,” she gasped, dropping to her knees and filling her hands, gulping down the crisp water, the fluid immediately refreshing her parched throat and making her feel ten times better.
Of course, feeling ten times better was still feeling like she’d been hit by a car, then backed up over and hit again. But it was better than the alternative. She splashed her face, washing off the sweat and grime. Margot looked at her side, noting the blood from where she’d cut herself during her hasty escape had completely dried now.
